CO-Horts

CO-Horts

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Posted by James
E. Klett, CSU Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture

As
you start to think of your 2018 annual plantings in your yard, flowering
annuals allow gardeners to be artists, planning and planting what will develop
into a dazzling landscape planting. Yellows, oranges and reds give a feeling of
warmth and excitement. Beds or borders of flowers in this color range stand out
and provide drama.

'KwikKombos Shooting Star Mix'

Greens,
blues and violets give a feeling of tranquility and coolness; they are perfect
to use in close up areas or plantings designed to blend with the surroundings.

Some
color combinations are especially pleasing. Large plantings of one color or
shades of one color are popular, as are those using complementary hues of red
and green, orange and blue, and yellow and violet. Their combinations should
make attractive beds for the entire season.

Contrast
plantings of bright annuals make quite a statement. Some eye-catching examples
are a three-tiered plantings of tall African marigolds in the background,
medium size orange marigolds in the middle and dwarf red French marigolds in
the front; deep orange African marigolds or orange zinnias bordered with dusty
miller; or violet blue farinacea salvia bordered with yellow dwarf French marigolds.

'TrixiLiner Old Glory'

Borders
and beds are two of the most common ways to plant annuals. Borders are usually
long and narrow, straight or free form plantings. They often have several types
of flowers and are used to define or emphasize a walk or garden space.

Beds
are solitary units or islands of flowers arranged in a circular, kidney,
rectangular or free form shape. For practical maintenance, flower beds should
be no more than five feet wide, to be assessable from both sides.

Determining
which plants to use in borders and beds is a personal decision, but certain
principles should be followed. It’s a good idea to combine spiky flowering
plants such as stock, angelonia, salvia, snapdragons and plumed celosia with
those that have a rounded shape- marigolds, phlox, ageratum, zinnia and
geraniums.

'TrixiLiner Batting Eyes'

Pay
attention to the heights of various plants. With borders, put tall plants in
the back and shorter plants toward the front. With an island or bed planting,
try to create a pyramid effect with the taller plants in the center and shorter
ones around the edges.

Annuals
are also often planted in containers. With this system, it is easy to change
color schemes throughout the gardening season. For spring, enjoy pots of pansies,
violas and forget-me-nots. When the heat of the summer gets the best of these
cool seasonal flowers, you can replace with summer annuals such as petunias,
marigolds, zinnias, begonias and geraniums.

'Confetti Garden Fiori Square'

Now
is the time to plan your annual color for 2018 and be bold and experiment with
color combinations to create your own landscape pictures this season.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Imagine turning
your lights off for one hour.And how
about the hour after that or for an hour each night or every time you leave a
room?Even more amazing is when 120
million people around the world, turn their lights off to raise awareness
about climate change.For one hour, we
are on the same page, but not all at the same time.It’s the thought that counts toward climate
change because it gets everyone thinking deeper.

On March 24,
2018 at 8:30 P.M. I hope you will join in Earth Hour and turn your lights off
for one hour?For one hour think of
the substantial energy reduction not being produced by 120 million people
around the world.The main goal of
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) back in 2007 was for people to show their support
for climate change.It started in
Sidney, Australia when 2.2 million people participated in turning their
lights off, to raise awareness of climate change.Since 2007 Earth Hour increased from one
city to 88 cities in 2009 and in 2017, 187 countries and territories turned
their lights off, including 12,000 landmarks and monuments.From turning the lights off, to turning an awareness
on about climate change and how to better conserve our resources.

At a grassroots
level, this is your opportunity as an individual to make a positive impact on
the planet we all call Home.The goal
of WWF is to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2050.One small act towards conserving energy
every day, makes a big difference to climate change.According to scientists, we currently have
the highest amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in over 800,000 years.This is driven by the use of fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, according to WWF human activity is the main driver of the
unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss which impacts our forests, oceans
and ecosystems that are the planet’s first line of defense against threats
like climate change.On a positive
note, teams in Brazil, Ukraine and Japan are raising awareness about
biodiversity and getting public support for action to protect
biodiversity.

In 2017, China,
Finland and Colombia used the Earth Hour platform to raise awareness and
inspire more people to make sustainable choices.That alone is positive impact.From the food you eat, to the clothes you
wear, to the car you drive, to the shelter you chose, think about how you can
reduce your energy footprint.Do you
carpool to work?Do you recycle?Have you stopped using plastic bags and
styrofoam cups?Do you turn the lights
out when you leave a room?

One thing I do
is recycle what I can from a fast food restaurant that I frequent. (The
restaurant will remain unnamed. They offer healthy food choices
there.)If you save your cup, they
give refills.I not only save on the
cost of a refill, but I use the cup over and over.

Here are some
other small things you can do to help make a positive impact on our planet:

1)Purchase products with a recycled content such as
kitchen towels, toilet paper, napkins and handkerchiefs.

2)Look for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label
on timber products such as garden chairs, paper and envelopes.

5)Purchase cloth bags for groceries.Less packaging reduces waste in
landfills.This is a reduction of
about 10% for each of us and cuts down on methane gas – a greenhouse gas that
contributes to global warming.Of
course, buying local and fresh food whenever also helps.

6)Planting natives is a solution to conserving water,
stopping the use of pesticides and fertilizers.Colorado State University has a program
called Native Plant Master® Program.Visit the website to learn more about it http://conativeplantmaster.org.

7)Pollinator Highway learn more about that at this
link: http://athomecolorado.com/buzz-colorado-pollinator-highway/
.Some of you may remember Lady Bird
Johnson’s Scenic Byways Initiative were more focused on the Beautification
Act in the late 1960’s.However, it
ended up achieving some of the same goals as the Pollinator Highway.One of those is a reduction in mowing.Tensions were high back then and her
thoughts were along bringing beauty to the highway medians in part to reduce
stress. Wildflowers and the natural
world meant so much to her that she started the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower
Center in Austin, Texas.

These are just a
few tips that you can do daily along with improving your landscape.Go to https://www.earthhour.org/I challenge you to join in Earth Hour this
year and beyond. I will, Linda Langelo, CSU Horticulture Program Associate.

Monday, March 19, 2018

It’s that time of the year. People are seeing “different”
grasses in their landscapes – and they are usually unattractive. So, of course,
it MUST be crabgrass! Here’s the problem: crabgrass is a summer annual weed
that won’t be germinating through most of Colorado until sometime in April (at
the EARLIEST), and more likely in May. This grass needs soil temperatures to be
consistently around 55 F (surface inch) for germination to occur. It’s still a
little early and chilly for it to begin growing.

Young cheatgrass will QUICKLY looklike this with a few weeks of warmweather.

So if it’s not crabgrass, what are people seeing? One likely
culprit is cheatgrass (aka downy bromegrass – Bromus tectorum). Cheatgrass is a winter annual – meaning that it
germinates around here in fall or late winter. The young seedling cheatgrass
doesn’t grow much in fall or spring – until we get a stretch of warm days
(60s-70s). Warm spring temperatures cause explosive growth, flowering, and then
seed production. It’s pretty much at the end of its life by June – when it
turns brown, dies, and drops its annoying seeds. The seeds it drops in June
will germinate in the fall…and the cycle continues.

Cheatgrass is one of the most troublesome and common weeds
throughout the western U.S. It’s another one of those nasty introduced weed
species that came to the U.S. sometime in the 1890s and has spread throughout
much of the U.S. It has become one of the most important agricultural and
rangeland weeds in the West. The rapid, aggressive growth and prodigious seed
production enable it to dominate native plants ecosystems – and make it a
nuisance in urban landscapes.

The key to managing annual weeds like cheatgrassis to prevent seed production.

As with all annual weeds, effective management centers on
prevention of seed formation. By preventing new seeds, populations of this weed
can be effectively eliminated in a few years because its seeds live for only a
few years in the soil after falling from the plant (the seeds of some weed
species can live for 30-40 years+ in the soil!).

In the flower or vegetable garden, cheatgrass can be easily
pulled because it has a very shallow root system when young. Mowing doesn’t
control it as the weed will quickly adapt to mowing and form viable seed close
to the soil surface. Larger patches can be sprayed with glyphosate (Roundup,
Kleenup) on warm days (70 F or greater is best) or one of the many "natural" burndown products (it may take several applications of the "natural" products).

Cheatgrass is easily pulled because
it is shallow-rooted.

As for crabgrass, its time is coming. Now would be a good
time to apply a crabgrass preventer in places like Grand Junction and Pueblo;
in cooler parts of the state it is OK to go later – but probably no later than
April 15th.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Like many of my fellow hortie bloggers (Curtis, Susan and Cassey), I have a backyard chicken flock. Yes, they are pets and also have names: Dear Prudence, Lovely Rita, Polyethene Pam, Dizzy Miss Lizzy and Anna. You may sense a theme...

Henny Lane (Windsor, Colo.)

I've been tending my flock for nearly four years and lived in blissful ignorance that I never had a mouse problem. Now, I'm sure there were mice...but I didn't see them. Until recently. It started when a mouse kept getting into the feeder. A rat-proof feeder, mind you. It was the WORST. I would lift the lid in the morning to check the feed level and twice I found a mouse scrambling to get out. I'm sure my neighbors wondered why there was shrieking (and cussing) in the early morning.

So we had a mouse. But yeah, I know. It's never just one mouse. One night, as I went to close the coop door, mice (plural!) ran over my feet. And that was it. I declared Mice War. (Now, before you judge, please know that I am a huge animal advocate. I break for squirrels. Rabbits are cute. I catch and release spiders. I don't like to kill anything...but mice are dirty, vile and can have a host of diseases that are harmful to me, the dogs and my chickens.)

Traps. And chicken treats!

The Mice War has been going on for five days and we've caught and killed 13 mice so far (a baker's dozen!). Dad has assured me that it's likely a dent in the population.

The official dead mouse count. (The quote has nothing to do with mice. I just love "Caddyshack".)

Dad also told me that mice have babies every 20 days. Thanks dad. So I will continue to trap until I go at least five days without a catch.

We have given the mice their own jar of peanut butter.

This weekend I'm going to try to find and locate their nests--with additional shrieking and cussing, I'm sure. I suspect they've found a cozy spot underneath the plastic storage bin next to the chicken run.

Maple is pretty sure this is where the mice are nesting. By the way, beagles are not good mice hunters.

I have to say, it's difficult to trap mice when you have both dogs and chickens to think about. Poison baits are dangerous for non-target mammals (plus, you have to think of the risk of an animal eating the poisoned mouse) and traps left out during the day would likely be set off by the nose of a beagle or pecking chicken. So mouse-hunting, in my yard, happens from dusk to dawn using only snap traps. I am working on cleaning up the spilled feed (a difficult task) and eliminating other food sources.

Lovely Rita is happy the mice populations are decreasing.

The biggest lesson here is that anytime you are feeding outdoor animals (birds, squirrels, ducks, dogs), you're going to have mice. So setting out a few traps periodically is a good practice. Just keep everyone safe in the process. For more information, check out this U of Maryland publication.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The 2018 color of the year is purple and purple plants are
listed as one of the top gardening trends for 2018.

Purple can be perceived as either a warm color or a cool
color, depending on what colors it is adjacent to.A purple-blue-green combination will appear
cool while a purple-red-orange-yellow combination will appear warm.Cool colors are relaxing and cooling and warm
colors are stimulating and warming.

When designing your garden with purple plants, keep in mind
that the color purple recedes into the
background so you will only enjoy your purple plants up close.To make your garden with purple plants ‘pop’,
provide contrast with complimentary colors (oranges and yellows).You can also add interest and contrast with contrasting
color and texture in plant foliage.

Purple coloring in plants is due to water-soluble pigments in
the plants called anthocyanins.They are
responsible for the colors red, purple, and blue in fruits and vegetables. They
have antioxidative and antimicrobial properties, improve visual and
neurological health, and protect against various diseases in
humans and animals.

Anthocyanins are associated with many different plant/animal interactions. These include the attraction of
pollinators as well as animals that survive on fruit. They can also repel herbivores and parasites.

Following
are a few of my personal favorite purple plants that I have grown, both ornamental and edible.

First off is my favorite purple cabbage:
‘Mammoth Red Rock’.

Brassica oleracea var. capitata ‘Mammoth Red Rock’ is an open-pollinated heirloom cabbage variety from 1889.They average 4-7 pounds when mature.Cabbages prefer cool temperatures and can
survive light freezes.They form tighter
heads, color up more and taste sweeter if they mature in fall rather than
summer.A good gardener friend tells me
that purple cabbages are less susceptible to aphids than green cabbages. The cabbage in the photo above had almost 2
more months until harvest in mid to late November. I made a gallon of
sauerkraut with half of the mature cabbage.

Other favorite purple vegetables that I grow are ‘Purple
Mountain’ potatoes, a Colorado-bred spud, ‘Black Nebula’ carrot, ‘Shiraz Tall Top’ beet (if you can call beets purple).I recently discovered a bush-pea variety with purple flowers that can be
grown in containers called ‘Little Snowpea Purple’.

‘Grandpa Ott’s’ morning glory was one of the seeds that
started the Seed Savers Exchange.I was
given the seeds of this plant years ago at a Pro Green Expo in Denver.I planted them on my deck in a 5 gallon
bucket.For the past 10 years, they have
been reseeding dependably, but politely, in containers on my deck and
occasionally popping up in the garden soil beside the deck.

The photo above was taken a few years ago in early
summer before full growth of the morning glories, nasturtiums (Tropaeolum lobbianum ‘Moonlight’) and
another favorite that I grow each year because the chipmunks won’t eat them, Dahlberg
daisies (Thymophylla tenuiloba).In case you have a good eye, trained to
diagnose plant problems, the morning glories look like they have a virus on the
leaves but I have only seen that one year.It could have also been caused by reflected heat.

They are true biennials so they never bloom until the second
year, at least for me.But, when they do
bloom, they bloom the entire season.They
are a hardy, cottage garden flower that re-seed happily in my garden. I love to share the tiny seeds at seed exchanges. They
come in shades of purples, pinks and white as can be seen in the far right of
the above photo, taken in late June or early July. They also make good cut flowers.

I cannot possibly pick a favorite native flower but the purplest
one I can think of is the beautiful and stately larkspur of our
mountains, Delphinium barbeyi.

This native flower is common in the subalpine zone.It grows from 4- 7’ tall in moist areas.It is often found growing alongside cow
parsnip (Heracleum maximum) or osha (Ligusticum porteri).The
photo above was taken in the San Juan Mountains a little above timberline on
August 2, 2017.

Other beautiful purple native flowers in Colorado are the
delicate bluebells of Scotland (Campanula
rotundifolia), many fleabane species (Erigeron
spp.), fringed gentians (Gentianopsis
thermalis) and many, many others.

Chokecherries (Prunus
virginiana) are a native fruit that are used to make sought- after jellies
and jams.My grandmother, Eloise
McMahon, taught me which native fruits are good to forage and we’d make
chokecherry jelly and chokecherry syrup
for sour dough pancakes.

The plants, except for the fruit, contain a poison hydrocyanic acid. When you eat
them raw they sometimes give your mouth a dry, puckery feeling. The flavor they give jellies and syrups is
very distinctive. They supposedly taste sweetest
after a frost but by then the bears may have beaten you to them!

I look forward to the cherry
season each year and can eat a pound at a time of fresh cherries. Yum! Not
only are bing cherries delicious, they also have anti-inflammatory
properties. Paonia Colorado has celebrated
more than 70 years of cherry harvest in western Colorado around each 4th
of July with the festival “Cherry Days”.